


Of Butterscotch and Banishment

by nerdzeword



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: M/M, Maybe angsty, Shit ton of OCs, at least they are all necessary ocs, i guess?, i was just writing shit tbh., not even sorry about that, solangelo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-10 03:21:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6937624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdzeword/pseuds/nerdzeword
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nico has been banished from Camp for something he didn't do. It's up to him to clear his name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Butterscotch and Banishment

**Author's Note:**

> This was based on a dream I had, and I finished it in one afternoon. I apologize for grammar mistakes etc. I didn't feel like bullying my beta into helping me today.
> 
> I used to tell myself, 'I may read fics but at least I don't write them.' Then it was 'at least I don't write gay fanfiction.' I can no longer say that. So here's to losing that last bit of normalcy. I'm officially trash I guess. 
> 
> It's kind of obvious which characters I made up on the spot. The rest of them are all Uncle Rick's doing.

Nico was afraid. He was not used to feeling afraid, he had a tendency to just shut off that part of his brain when he was doing stupid things that were likely to get himself killed. But he couldn’t afford to do that now, and it was frustrating him. He had been a lot of unusual things the past few months. 

Taking in a hoard of unclaimed demigod kids was just the beginning. 

“Peyton. Could you please stop teasing Reagan?” Nico groaned and rolled back over to shove his face back into his pillow. “If we get caught because she starts screaming again, I’m going to be pissed.” Nico was tired all the time now too. He was always tired after shadow travel, but he usually had time to recover at least a bit of sleep before the next monster, or the next jump. 

When you had five kids under the age of 8 to look after, sleep didn’t come often. Nico wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold out like this though. Peyton was pretty good with a sword, when push came to shove, and Lexi could hold her own with a knife. But they only had three weapons to go between six demigods, and Priscilla was only three anyway. He needed to get them to camp halfblood, and fast.

But Nico couldn’t go back. Whatever had killed his new kids’ parents, had taken his new home away from him forever. And, most likely, the only chance he had at love. Nico sighed softly into the pillow. If only he could just- wait. The beginnings of a plan began to form in his mind, and he scrambled to find a drachma in the bottom of his bag. He couldn’t call anyone back home, not that they would listen to him anyway, but they would listen to one of his kids. No one at camp could resist a child in need. He pulled Britt off to the side and explained the plan to her. 

He had a special fondness for Britt that came entirely from the fact that he was 99% sure she was a daughter of Apollo. Her smile was exactly like the one he loved so desperately on a different Apollo child. 

Nico had chosen Britt for a reason, however. She was younger than Peyton, and she couldn’t talk her way out of a plastic bag, the way Reagan could, but she had a childish sort of innocence that not even baby Priscilla could pull off. Nico thought it was probably a child of Apollo thing because even at age 19, Will could still do the same. Nico tried to turn off the thoughts of his -now forbidden- boyfriend. 

Will was why he needed this to go right. Even if his boyfriend hated him, he needed Will to know the truth, and he needed to keep his kids safe. Nico had the other kids sit on the bed by the window, out of the sight of the bathroom. He nodded at Britt, who shakily threw the drachma into the rainbow Nico had already prepared for her. 

“Camp Half Blood.” After some consideration, he had decided it best to send a missive to the entire camp, rather than a singular person. Reagan and Lexi both opened their mouths to ask what she was doing, but Nico slammed his hands over them before they could make a sound. He put a finger to his lips, and they nodded. Nico looked down to make sure Rissy wasn’t going to give them away, and found that she had fallen asleep, with her head in his lap. That solved one problem at least.

“Who are you?” Nico could hear a voice from the bathroom, and Nico recognized it as Chiron’s. 

“I-I was told to call you if I needed help, there are scary things chasing me. Monsters! An- and I’m so scared!” She wailed Nico thought he should talk to Piper about getting her a career in acting, assuming Piper ever talked to him again. 

“Where are you at? Who told you to call us?” Chiron questioned 

“I’m in a town in New Mexico. Alba- alba”

“Albuquerque?” 

“Yeah!” She was going to say more but instead she let out a high pitched scream. The scream was real. Nico detached himself from Rissy and ran into the bathroom, sword drawn. Britt was standing in the middle of the bathroom, staring wide eyed at something outside the window. Nico saw the faces of his father’s furies and growled. Then he noticed the Iris message was still active. He waved a hand through it. Fuck. There went his plans. 

“What do you want?” He snapped at the furies. They gave him identical wide sharp toothed smiles. 

“It seems we have found the cause of all of the mischief, your father thought it best to warn you that you are facing a very powerful goddess. We are not bidden to say her name, but know this, she was the first child of the gods, and she was banished to earth with good reason. You would do well to be wary of her son of Hades.” Nico nodded curtly at them and they disappeared. Britt wrapped her arms around his legs and hugged him tightly.

“Come on Britta. We need to keep moving.” They packed up their stuff, with the ease of practice and Nico shadow travelled them to Albuquerque. He had chosen New Mexico for a reason. This is where Will was from, and he wanted to give his boyfriend a fighting chance at being allowed to come along. Assuming he wanted to come along, that was.

 

Nico was making a grocery run when they found him, three hours later. He sighed, he wasn’t sure if it was in exasperation or longing, when he saw the bright blond hair of his boyfriend. 

“You know, I thought we established like four years ago, that if you don’t want to be seen, you should cover up your hair.” Nico knew he shouldn’t tease him, he had no idea how Will felt about everything. But he longed for some sort of normalcy amongst all of the crazy of the past few months, and teasing Will was as natural as breathing. Will turned to face him and let out a breath.

“Nico.” Nico wasn’t sure what the emotion flickering in his boyfriend’s eyes was, but it didn’t look  _ bad.  _ He continued his way through the self check out, as if every bone in his body wasn’t vibrating from the effort of keeping himself from flinging himself into the arms of the boy he loved more than life itself. 

“Who else is with you?” 

“Piper and Lou Ellen.” 

“I’m surprised Percy and Jason didn’t try to come.”

“Oh they tried, Hazel too. but I had higher priority, and we needed Piper’s charmspeak. Chiron thought it best we send someone who wasn’t friends with you along as well, so they could contain the situation, should the need arise and Piper and I couldn’t do it.” Nico nodded thoughtfully. 

“Makes sense. I’d have thought that Lou might have known better than to let you try to disguise yourself though.”

“Har har har. Laugh it up deathboy. You have some explaining to do.” Nico turned to look him in the eye, letting him see some of the fear he’d been holding in for months.

“I didn’t do it Will. I swear I didn’t.”

“I know Nico.” Nico felt like a thousand pounds had been lifted from his shoulders and he sagged in relief. He wasn’t sure what he would do if Will didn’t believe him. Nico took his grocery bags and gestured for Will to follow him. He knew Piper and lou Ellen were around somewhere, but that didn’t bother him too much. Will took one of his grocery bags and laced their fingers together as Nico led them to the hotel where he had left his kids. 

“I was on a mission from my dad, tracking down something or the other, when I came across Dylan’s quest. I didn’t want to stay and help them, terrible things happen when you have quests of more than three people.” Will squeezed his hand. “So I helped them kill their batch of monsters and went on my way. When I got back to camp a week later, I wasn’t even through the barrier before Dylan and the others were demanding I leave because I had killed a mortal in cold blood. I, of course, had no idea what was going on until they led me to the big cabin to demand that Chiron banish me from camp. I had no way to prove that it wasn’t me, and no one else was around to vouch for me, so before I knew it, I was out of the camp with no idea of what to do, or how I could possibly fix it.”

“I was in the Infirmary that day, there was a lot of kids that had gotten hurt in capture the flag the day before. I was furious when I found out what happened. I tried to message you, but they never went through.”

“I know. I think it had something to do with the banishment, I couldn’t contact anyone from camp. I don’t know why it took so long for me to think about having Britt call instead.” They reached the door of the hotel room, and Nico dropped Will’s hand to search his pocket for the key.

“Speaking of which, who is Britt. What have you been doing all this time?”

“You’re about to find out.” He finally got the key in the lock and opened the door to a chorus of ‘Nico!’ and a ‘daddy!’ from little Priscilla.

“Hold up. What’s the password.” Peyton held Rissy back as he spoke.

“Butterscotch.” Nico responded coolly, waving off Will’s upturned eyebrow and amused look as Priscilla finally got free and latched herself onto Nico’s legs. She was shortly followed by the other girls. Peyton just stood in the corner and watched Will mistrustfully. 

“Girls! Let me get into the room before you maul me!” Nico snapped at them. Then he turned to look behind him. “Are you two coming in or not?” Piper and Lou Ellen flickered into sight and Lou scowled at him. Piper, however, looked practically giddy. Will shut the door behind them as they wandered into the small hotel room. 

“Nico di Angelo, you have some explaining to do! How dare you leave my best friend alone and heartbroken while you run around gathering what looks like an army of small children!” Lou Ellen waved her arms as she talked and Nico would have laughed if he wasn’t absolutely certain that she would do something horrible to him if he did. Will didn’t seem to have that problem, as he rolled his eyes dramatically. 

“I wasn’t that bad Lou.”

“Everyone who wandered within fifty feet of the Apollo cabin would start reciting bad poetry. For a month.”

“I didn’t even know you could do that.” Nico was a little bit impressed. Will shrugged 

“Neither did I.”

“You’re his boyfriend?” Reagan looked up at Will, intrigued. 

“Yup.”

“Does that mean I can have a girlfriend?” Will was going to answer, when Nico cut him off. 

“Not until you’re like eighty.” 

“Twenty.”

“Seventy.”

“Thirty.”

“Deal.” Will watched his boyfriend’s fake scowl with a small grin. After a few introductions, and some food that Will had been aghast at Nico for feeding to small children, Nico had sent all of the kids into sleeping bags on the floor. He was trying not to push his luck with Lou Ellen, and letting her and Piper get the other bed seemed like a good enough concession. 

It didn’t even take five minutes before Priscilla was climbing up onto the bed to curl up between Nico and Will’s legs. It was a tight squeeze, as Will hadn’t let go of Nico once since they got back to the hotel room.

“One day, you’ll have to sleep in your own bed, Rissy.” 

“If he’s your boyfriend, does that mean he’s my daddy too?” She ignored his jab. Nico just sighed, he had given up trying to tell her he wasn’t her daddy after the first week. 

“You’ll have to ask him.” She looked over at Will, who smiled brightly and said 

“Of course!” she grinned and snuggled down between them, falling right to sleep. Nico swore the child slept more than Clovis.

“You’re probably going to regret that.” Will shrugged

“What’s mine is yours and all that jazz.” 

“That’s not how the saying goes and it doesn’t even-” Nico never got the chance to finish his sentence before Will’s lips were pressed against his own and Nico felt like he was slowly dissolving into Will’s touch. 

“Oi!” Lou Ellen called grumpily. “There are children in the room you two.”

“Come on Lou, it was just a kiss, and I thought it was impressive they managed to hold out this long.” Piper sent them a wink and Nico rolled his eyes. He leaned his head on Will’s shoulder and stroked Priscilla’s hair. 

“I should probably tell you how I ended up with these guys, huh?”

“When was the last time you slept?” Will interrupted him.

“I dunno. I slept for a few hours last night. But-”

“Nico. Go to sleep. We’ll keep an eye on them, you look like you haven’t slept in months.” Nico couldn’t have fought him if he tried. Will was warm and comfortable, and Priscilla’s snores were soft and even and Nico felt more content that he’d felt in months. 

“Love you.” He murmured, he was asleep before he even heard Will’s whispered,

“I love you too.”

 

Nico was woken by the smell of bacon. He sat up, bleary eyed, as he tried to figure out where it was coming from. 

“He’s awake, he’s awake!” Lexi bounced up onto the bed next to him and he ruffled her hair. He finally located the source of the smell, when he looked around for the rest of his kids. They were all huddled around Lou as she demonstrated the proper way to cook bacon in the microwave. Reagan even looked like she was taking notes. 

“Quite the kids you’ve got here.” Piper sat down on his other side. Nico just nodded. Lexi bounced off the bed as Lou pulled another batch of bacon out of the microwave. Nico heard the shower running, and figured that must be where Will was.

“Jason and Percy were furious you know. When they found out what happened, it was raining for a week. It was pretty impressive they managed to bypass Camp Half Blood’s anti weather wards at all, let alone for a full week. And when Hazel and Reyna found out? Oh boy. They declared that until you were allowed to return, no one in Camp Half Blood would get any help from Camp Jupiter. Even Frank looked pissed. Well, as pissed as Frank can look.” She put her hand on his shoulder. 

“Point is, Nico, you’re not alone in this, and whatever killed all of those mortals, and framed you, is going to pay.” Nico’s dream came flooding back to him. It wasn’t as coherent as demigod dreams usually were, but it was enough to jog his memory of a certain card in a lost deck that he had never had a chance to find before he had sworn of Mythomagic forever. 

“I know who did it. And it’s not going to be as easy to catch her as you might think Pipes.”

“Her?” He turned to look at her from the corner of his eye. 

“Atë. Goddess of Misery and Mischief.” 

 

“Okay, Spill.” Lou Ellen and Piper waited for him to start filling them in on everything he had learned so far. They had left Will in with the kids, since he was the best with them anyway.

“I just figured it out last night. I started tracking her when I was banished last fall, but I had no idea who she was. All I knew was that everywhere she went, there was a trail of destruction and dead mortals. It’s Atë. She’s toying with us. She kills the mortal parents of unclaimed demigods, and watches them try to survive on their own for  _ fun. _ ” Lou and Piper’s eyes widened in horror. 

“So all of those-” 

“Orphans. All of them.You don’t even want to know how many I reached too late.” There were tears gathering in both of their eyes, but Nico knew he had to make them understand how  _ important _ it was for him to do this.

“So you decided to take them all in and protect them. And then what? You can’t keep this up forever Nico. Even your kids have started to notice how worn out you’re getting.” He nodded.

“I know. I shouldn’t have to though. She’s usually got the Litae to do what I’ve been doing, and minimize the damage. If I can figure out what happened to them, and get them back, they should be able to keep her in check.” 

“I hope so. For all of your sakes.” Lou said.

“What are you going to do about the kids though?” Piper asked

“That’s why I called you. I need you to take them back to camp for me, I can’t get anywhere near it, and there’s no way i can take them with me to hunt down the Litae.”

“And Will?” 

“What about Will.”

“You’re just going to leave him again? Just like that?”

“I didn’t leave him the first time Lou. I was forced out if you recall.” Nico snapped. There was no way he was admitting to them just how much it teared him apart inside to have to leave Will again. He felt as if something were physically ripping a hole in his chest, but he also knew that if he didn’t do this, it would only get worse and worse and he couldn’t bear to see any more kids with lifeless eyes. And the sight of Lexi’s face with tear tracks running down through the mud that caked her features, still haunted him, five months later. He had to save them. He  _ had to.  _ Piper seemed to sense this, as she rested a hand on his arm. 

“Just be careful out there Nico.” he nodded.

 

They were ready to go. Everyone that is, except Nico and Will. All of the kids were loaded into the car Piper had ‘been given’ and Piper had dragged Lou Ellen off to the side to give them some space. Nico looked at is boyfriend and every molecule within him whispered that he shouldn't leave. That there was some other way that didn't require him to leave again. 

“Come back to me Deathboy.” Will was the first to speak, and Nico found he couldn't answer. He nodded. 

“Take care of them Solace.” he said when he found his voice.

“I promise. I also promise not to tell Hazel she’s an aunt just yet. We’ll save that conversation for when you come back.” Nico tried to laugh, but his throat closed up and it was all he could do to breathe. There was so much he wanted to tell Will, so much that was let unsaid, but he couldn’t get the words out. Will looked like he was having the same problem. Nico grabbed Will’s shirt and captured his lips instead. Pouring everything he couldn’t say into that one kiss.

“See you on the other side Sunshine.” he breathed when they parted

“Oh you will, Deathboy.”

“Te Amo.”

“Y tu.”

“That’s not even Italian. Idiot.”

“You can tell me how to say it properly when you get back.” With one last kiss, Will was gone. He ran back to where the girls waited with the car, sunlight dancing in his hair. Nico waved as he stepped backwards into the nearest shadow.

He would be back. He had to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to share thoughts, opinions, fan theory's etc.  
> you can always message me on tumblr too if you want. nerdzewordart.tumblr.com


End file.
